


The Lady Jessica Love and Betrayal

by lucy_drake_paints



Category: Dune - All Media Types, Dune Series - Frank Herbert
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:47:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26578549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucy_drake_paints/pseuds/lucy_drake_paints
Summary: The Holy War rages. The Lady Jessica is mother to an Emperor and an abomination. Everything that is happening is because she refused to obey a sacred order she was born into. She is lost in a sea of her own memories and all the Reverend Mothers before her.
Relationships: Leto Atreides I/Jessica (Dune)
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

Jessica

10194

The wind and sand swirled and hissed like waves outside the window. The windows here are of arched stone, the only light in this old room. It was a bedroom once though there is no bed in it any more. The ornate wooden panels are from pear trees, from Caladan. Sometimes she could still smell it. The moisture. The rain. Or was it just all those memories. The Lady Jessica pinched her forehead to get the memories straight.  
Footsteps outside the door.  
Jessica relaxed, she sensed a servant bringing her spice coffee. No-one was here to assassinate her today. The Sisterhood did not dare. Not yet. The Holy War was cleansing the Universe. Her son was Emperior. The door side open and a Freman from Tabr seitch brought in coffee on a silver tray. Jessica smiled she remembered Uzma's whole life, though Romallo's eyes.  
“Is your sister well Uzma?”  
“Yes, Reverend Mother, much better.”  
Such warmth and affection for me. No, for Romallo.  
Jessica had placed cushions on the floor and sat smoothly beside the small round table the coffee was on. The glass cup cradled by silver perfumed the room. Closing her eyes she listened to Uzma leave the room quietly and walk away. Jessica expanded her awareness both around her in the room and then inwards. Her memories of spice coffee. The hot sweet coffee darkly drew her deeper as she drank it slowly. There was a sudden shift and something she had not felt in a long time. Like a cold wet stone in her mind.  
They will come for me.  
Jessica had betrayed the Sisterhood. The Bene Gessuit had birthed her, raised her, trained her and she had betrayed them, for love. For a moment her mind was full of Leto. His tenderness, his humour, the way he stood when he was angry, when he was sad. The smell of the Caladonian rain on him. Jessica opened her eyes and in a fluid motion stood and moved to the tall desk. A bottle of dark blue spice ink and a pen rested there. Hesitant she picked up the pen and dipped it into the ink and began.

For all the formalities and cautions taught to me in my years of Bene Gesserit training I can see the echo of my father in me. The Baron Harkonnen was not a good man. Yet I feel I have more of his cunning than my mothers. He was a monster but he was not born that way, he was created, in part by my own mother. He was bold. Rebelous, fierce with his deep feeling sometimes outweighing his tactical mind. I too am guilty of this. My emotions were not hate or rage. They were not lust or greed but no less did mine rule me. Even if those moments were fleeting. It is difficult not to feel distaste for the heroic myths and yet to be so dependant on them. Was it fated? Was it the Universe reacting to what it needed? Or was it a young girl who knew everything and nothing who fell in love?

Wallachix IX still stands. A tranquil place of cool winters with light snow and warm lazy summers with swifts and swallows flying in long legato loops over farmlands, meadows and gardens.  
Since entering in, becoming a Reverend Mother I can remember my birth and infant self, and all the other infant selves a Reverend Mother is. I was not nursed by my birth mother Helen Mohiam but a wet nurse. I do remember her face peeking at me in the cradle with a look of not affection, or love but pride.  
There were 10 of us to a room as a gaggle of sisters in a dormitory. We were educated from birth in The Way. History, and art, languages and politics. We still had our milk teeth but our room was average. Our names were alphabetical, I was last, Jessica. At night if we were frightened or sad it would be one of these sisters that comforted us. Alia. In her clumsy treble she would hug us and say the Litany Against Fear. All those years later when I think of those words it is in her tiny voice. It is no surprise then that my daughter bears her name. We would eat, sleep, train and school together those simple elegant cream stone rooms. At about the age of five years our little group began to attend school with the other girls. Girls from great houses. Princesses, Countesses and while they were not supposed to treat us differently the teachers did. They would never let us forget our “inferior birth” and we would never let them forget they were five years behind on their training.  
It was an important lesson. One I never forgot. I got into a fight with a royal brat, Chalice, and my barbed tongue was no match for her and she struck me across the face. It was her words that burned and twisted into me “You'll never be legitimate no matter who you are whored to.”  
Even at that young age I could hear the truth in it. I carried long after. A shield. I was not one of them, but I could play one very well. The Way, the Bene Gesserit way is to observe and find a way. Violence, flattery, mental undoing with a word or look. It was my mother, the Great Helen Mohiam that put those words into that girl. She used her like a blade. It was her way.

Jessica put down the pen. She stretched her hands and neck moving herself with unnatural speed into a fighting posture, released it and shook off the memories. She placed her hands on the crysknife inside her Reverend Mothers robe and tried to shake that feeling. The cold wet stone in her mind.  
They will be coming for me.


	2. Feints within Feints

The Lady Jessica was walking down the stone corridors. The palace an Imperial design with hints of Harkonen influence and alteration, foreign and familiar, alien and ancestral.   
Always at the centre, always outside, she mused.  
The skirts of her Reverend Mother's robe dragged along the stone floors making a light hissing noise, like sand. The palace was quiet. Maybe an hour after dawn. Daylight is the enemy on Arakas. The sietch must sleep in the day light and work under the moons. Liet-Kynes words echoed and flowed into her mind. Romallo learned The Way from Pardot Kynes, Liet's father. Jessica paused for a moment. Memories of Romallo's childhood. Deep desert born the scent of creosote bush as she teased sand trout with drops of saliva. The birth of her brother Akeem. And later his death. The day the Harkonen's came. Not to Arakas, no-one had much cared. Except it changed everything. Akeem had died without wife or child and so Romallo inherited his water. Yet it was this that was the moment that drew Romallo to go within. She was still sayyadina and over seeing the first planting in the deep desert. Liet-Kynes was Chani's son by Pardot. Pardot, an offworlder with a true vision. Romallo had never seen someone water fat and pale before. Chani was a good Freman. Like her granddaughter Chani, who would be the mother of an Emperor, like Jessica was.  
Pardot came from Kaitain- the Imperial planet. He was doing a comparative survey of Arakis and Salusa Secondus. He was testing botanical models to increase oxygen cycle though plants to change climate. Pardot watch and listened. He learned the sands, all of them. The drum sand, tidal dust basin, pea sand, gravel, the sand that bites with first of morning.   
The Converted water of life, drank after a Reverend Mother enters in. The Tau ritual. The Freman Bene Gesserit ritual to pass on the mitochondrial memories, for Reverend Mothers here were a breed apart.   
Jessica's mind was playing with something. Like a tongue touching the space where a tooth had been. Or perhaps the stone in a shoe. There was an absence and something unwanted here.   
She had not been going to the training room but she heard the noise. Sensed it's violence and felt the moisture of it in the air.  
How strange to feel that from here, she thought.  
She stood at the doorway and watched.  
Alia. Alia of the Knife. She was dressed for combat, blade in hand. Cutting circles, jabbing and feinting. A complex dance of terrifying speed and subtle delicacy. In spirals and circles, over and over. Alia seemed to have blended the Bene Gesserit Way, the Feman way and some Imperial Arena fighting. It was surprising.  
"Where did you learn to fight like that?"  
Jessica spoke quietly.  
Alia unmoved and unsurprised shrugged.  
"What would my brother say, ah yes: it seemed the proper way."  
The spike of fear and rage blossomed in Jessica for a moment. Had they got to her? Had Irulan got to her? Or was it someone else?   
"I have some Mentat in me too mother and if you fight enough Sardaukar you learn their style too."  
Jessica smiled.  
"It is late, do you wish to have some food with me in the garden?"  
"No. I am going to finish training. It is the first of Akkad and the Adab is upon you."  
The Prophet Echo rang out like a struck bell.  
My daughter is some much more than even I ever dreamed, she frightens me.  
Alia turned her head a grinned wolf like.   
"Run along mother, the Universe has business with you."  
Jessica withdrew into to dark corridor and made a point to move silently towards the garden. For all her Freman acclamation the relief when she opened the airlocked door to the botanical paradise of the lush green space was almost overwhelming. The fountain was making the bright sounds of flowing water and there was a pulse of misters keeping the opulent foliage in it's healthy state. It was enough water for 30 people, perhaps more. She sealed the door. The moisture on her skin made her think of rain, Caladan.   
Leto looking out over the water. They were both so young. Impossibly young with no idea how dark and terrifying life could actually be. It had been a diplomatic function and Leto and brought Jessica. It had been a long night and instead of going home he had taken a two bottles of the best wine and a boat out on the water. It was just them. No guards. No agendas. Just sweet wine and all the stars. They talked for hours, and laughed often. Leto kissed her and tasted of wine. She kissed him. No complicated second guessing. No Courtesan training techniques. Just the water, the wine and the stars. It was like something cold and hard she had deep inside her broke open. That was it, that was the moment, she fell in love.  
Against her better judgement a tear crested and then fell. Her eyes the colour of Caladan's dawn.   
Water for the dead.  
Someone had dropped a flower in the fountain. It was red.

**Author's Note:**

> I am always fascinated by the female worlds alluded to but not explored by male writers. So I write them to explore their lives hinted at but not told. Please be kind with feedback.


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